Dear Sarah Brereton, Head of CRM at Gymshark,

I’m writing to you because on August 8th, 2020, we at PostFunnel – a publication dedicated to everything relationship marketing (O&O by Optimove) – analyzed your company’s relationship marketing tactics, according to our “7 commandments” for basic CRM practices for the kind of world we live in today. In other words – through the lens of how brands should behave in a post-COVID-19 world to improve their chances of building meaningful customer relationships.

You can read more about the method at the bottom of this page.

Since we ran Gymshark’s CRM analysis back in August 2020, we wanted to revisit it today to see what has changed – what has improved, stagnated, or gotten worse. After all, we all know these things are dynamic.

See the full analysis of Gymshark from August 8th, 2020.

Back then, your brand got 73% and made it to 6th place out of the 11 leading brands we analyzed! Now, 42 brands into our series – Gymshark bumped down to 21st place, still smark right in the middle of the pack.

What seems to be the case is a crucial CRM drawback: Realtime Personalization.

Let’s get deeper.

What’s Gone Better

Incentives and Perks – Previous Score 5/10

When entering the Gymshark website, the first banner we were prompted with was the following Sale promo:

When clicking on the “shop” button, we were impressed that most of the clothing on sale was in fact, 50% off, as presented in the banner.

Last time when analyzing your brand, you got a 5/10 here as we couldn’t find any promotions/offers to incentivize customers to continue shopping with you – asides from a generic student and NHS discount.

Some promotions here and there is an excellent tool at the hands of the CRM, of course.

The score now would easily go up to at least 7.

Master UX – Previous Score 6/10

Last time, we gave you a 6/10 on this commandment as, to be frank, it annoyed us that you were missing that “continue shopping” button after adding items to our cart.

Though Gymshark is still leaving it out – we feel that our user experience this time around was better. Everything from quickly navigating through the drop-down menu to the clear white spaces on the website makes it all easy and straightforward to find what we’re looking for.

Also, the tiny video at the top of the product page provides customers with a great idea of how the item looks and fits.

While this is an improvement, the overall UX isn’t memorable or something that by itself will make users visit and re-visit. So this 6 will not become a 9 now or anything.

What’s Not Better

Realtime Personalization – Previous Score 4/10

When going back to the homepage after adding items to our cart, we were presented with similar item suggestions from the Sale Section – which is def an improvement when it comes to personalizing the customer’s experience with your brand.

Though Gymshark would get additional points for this, still, many personalization tactics are missing. For instance, no cross-selling initiatives were implemented when adding items to our cart – and they easily could have been. The below only shows upselling tactics, which, in times of economic recovery – people are perhaps a bit less appreciative.

When exiting the Gymshark website and hopping onto our social media accounts, we didn’t notice any quick retargeting efforts.

Personalization is crucial, and personalization at scale is the holy grail. We still do not really feel Gymshark is providing us a personalized journey.

And so, overall, we’d say that Gymshark’s new score will probably go from 73% to 77%.

That’s climbing from 21st place to about 17. Not a huge jump.

But, it’s clear what would generate a bigger climb.

To learn more about how Gymshark can fully benefit from all the latest, cutting-edge realtime marketing personalization practices, feel free to reach out to me at any time:

Amit Bivas, VP Marketing at Optimove

Email: [email protected]

About the 7 Commandments for Basic CRM Tactics for the post-coronavirus-outbreak world:

We have a saying here at PostFunnel: All marketing is relationship marketing. Why? Because every touchpoint with a potential customer impacts the kind of relationship they will have with a brand, if and when they become customers. Even branding has. It’s like what people hear about their upcoming blind-date can determine the actual meeting’s success.

In recent years, it meant that the ways brands support global, social, environmental, and even political causes have become increasingly critical to their relationships with customers.

Then, 2020 happened. With its global pandemic’s tragedy, economic downturn, and historical social and political turmoils – people turned their eyes to brands, almost as much as they have to governments. Expecting and judging brands by how they conduct themselves throughout such events was never more crucial to a company’s CRM success.

One after the other, the internet got flooded with articles advising marketing and CRM leaders on how to make sure their brand is suited for this new reality. So, we combed dozens of them – and came up with a list of 7 staples that appeared in most of those articles.

The seven most essential commandments a brand must follow these days to make sure they put themselves in the best position possible to develop long, meaningful relationships with their customers.

The 7 commandments are:

1) Transparency. Show the human side of your brand

2) Give incentives and perks (that make sense)

3) Be relevant (with your language, offering)

4) Be helpful (improve your communities’ lives)

5) Personalize in realtime (cause, duh)

6) Master UX (slow, clunky websites are no longer an option)

7) Leverage social media (don’t just treat it as a sales channel)

Yup, that’s all. Without being at least decent at all of these, your CRM efforts will struggle to achieve their full potential.

And, let’s be honest, it’s not too much to ask of a brand, right?

Yet, you’d be surprised how many well-known brands fall short too often when analyzed through these lenses.

Still, it makes some sense – these changes are happening fast, and not all brands can react and adapt quickly enough and on all fronts.

And we’re here to follow these reactions and adjustments as they happen.

The post A Letter to Sarah Brereton: An Update on Gymshark’s Basic CRM Tactics appeared first on Post Funnel.